Random musings about the state and direction of educational technology usage in the classrooms of today.

Saturday

Please retire

Recently I spoke with a small group of teachers about the importance of using collaborative writing in their classrooms. We talked a bit about blogging, wiki's and discussion forums. One of the - shall we say 'experienced' teachers thought that all of this technology stuff would not improve student achievement, and that it had no place in the classroom.

2 comments:

I am student and a tech geek, however, I partially agree with that teacher. I often wonder if "all of this technology stuff" is actually improving things. Are these technologies being used because they really are the best way, or is it just technology for technology's sake? Are the old ways so bad that we have to throw them out to make way for the future?

Don't get me wrong, I love computers, but sometimes the computer way isn't the best way. I think forcing technology on people can be just as bad as holding on to the past.

I took the technology survey last week at KCTC. I did not vote for any of the items that seemed to imply that students would be required to contribute to blogs, forums, or wikis.

I realize that the power of blogs is that anyone can start one. However, I think students should be taught how to create content that is actually useful to others. They should also learn to think before clicking that post button. Do we really want millions of blogs that look like youtube comments? If blogs are to be taken seriously, they must be accurate and have high standards.

If a student is interested in blogging, by all means, encourage that, but don't force us to write posts and comments about things we are not interested in.

I subscribe to both your blog and twitter RSS feeds. Many of your links are very interesting. I really liked that GeoGebra app. Thanks for helping me discover that. Keep up the good work!

I should have been more clear in my rant. The educator that said this was convinced that no technology should be used in classrooms. This included the use of video clips to expand on course content, sounds relating to the content, etc. Collaborative work online was out of the question, because "it was a distraction, and we can't control it..." - as if kids just invented doodling in class last week.

My lasting thought is that if we exclusively keep teaching in a pencil and paper based world , our kids are going to be so far behind their peers when they arrive in the 21st century, knowledge-based working world.